Strange Darling

A woman and a man meet at a motel and by the end of the day one of them has killed the other. The film cuts that into six chapters and plays them out of order: three, five, one, four, two, six, then an epilogue. JT Mollner built the structure to keep the audience permanently on the wrong side of it, and it works. Which character is the predator keeps moving. Giovanni Ribisi shot it, his first feature as cinematographer. He worked entirely on 35mm, produced, and brought his own equipment. Willa Fitzgerald plays the Lady and Kyle Gallner the Demon, and the Rotten Tomatoes consensus calls both of them breakout performances. The card at the start is a standard fiction disclaimer. Mollner has neither confirmed nor denied that real events lie behind it. The reviews are strong at 95 percent; the box office was not. It opened on 1,133 screens for 1.1 million dollars and finished at 4.8 million. Who it is for: viewers who like thrillers that play with structure, and the texture of 35mm. Who it is not for: anyone uncomfortable where violence and sex are braided together. The film manufactures that discomfort on purpose.